PlayStation Mobile Developer Program Launches

Hi PlayStation.Blog readers! I’m one of several members of the team leading our new platform, PlayStation Mobile, working to get you fun, engaging titles on a multitude of PlayStation-Certified smartphones and tablets.

Since we launched PlayStation Mobile on October 3rd, we’ve been receiving a steady stream of positive responses from both developers and consumers. All of your feedback is crucial to the success of PlayStation Mobile, and we’ve been working diligently these last few weeks to bring more titles to the newest PlayStation platform.

Get ready to see this library expand in the coming months, because today we are happy to announce the launch of the PlayStation Mobile Developer Program, which provides an enhanced and open environment for content developers to create and release their content on PlayStation Mobile. The Dev Portal provides everything a developer needs to start working on PlayStation Mobile.

Through the online portal, developers can download the official version of the PlayStation Mobile SDK, sign the PlayStation license agreement, and pay just $99 (U.S.) to publish as many PlayStation Mobile titles as they want for one year. We believe we’re in a ‘golden age’ of game development and the Dev Portal lowers the barriers of entry for developers to create and publish titles including games directly to the most diehard and passionate fans in the industry.

Our goal was to make publishing game and non-game titles for PlayStation Mobile an easy and enjoyable experience, and we’ve been working hard to ensure that the new Dev Portal accomplishes this objective. To get started on the Dev Portal, click here and follow the registration process.

We’ve already had some great feedback from top developers using the PlayStation Mobile SDK to develop for the platform. Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, the creators of Super Crate Box, said:

Our experiences with PlayStation Mobile have been positive. There’s always a sense of reluctance going into a project working with forces larger than you can control, but the time we worked with Sony has been great. Not only were all aspects of our cooperation professional and on equal footing, we also had access to a great developer support team and technical support for the PlayStation Mobile SDK. We were impressed.

Our hope is that other developers have equally positive experiences using the PlayStation Mobile Dev Portal, and we’re dedicated to making it as simple as possible for the development community to bring PlayStation-like game experiences to all of our dedicated fans via the PlayStation Mobile platform.

It’s thrilling to start this key initiative and I can’t wait to see all the creativity and genius that exists out there. Show us your stuff!

As a college student currently studying game programming, the opportunity to build and release games for the devices under the PSMoblie platform (especialy Vita!) for only $99 a year is awesome. This is fantastic.

oh thank goodness :) but one thing buy any chance can you guys provide softwares to produce games?(MAC support too) please! i dream of creating games. i’m in college but man i want to start learning already :(

I’ve noticed a lot of the PlayStation Mobile releases thus far are retro inspired. Was this intentional or just a case of where you guys hand picked some games that just so happened to be retro inspired?

There are a few retro-inspired titles on PlayStation Mobile, but there’s a fair amount of genres to be found. Rebel is more modern feeling, and Loot the Land has that clean flash look to it. Lots more to come too!

There are a few retro-inspired titles on PlayStation Mobile, but there’s a fair amount of genres to be found. Rebel is more modern feeling, and Loot the Land has that clean flash look to it. Lots more to come too!

Nifty, I haven’t messed around with game development since I put together a profoundly TERRIBLE OpenGL-based game as part of an interview with Volition years and years ago, but have had some potentially interesting ideas occur to me since then, at least a couple of which might be a good match for the Vita

I’ll have to download this and see how much of a trainwreck I can produce this time. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to fool around with this stuff!

Yes, lots’o’curation coming your way. It’s a work in progress that we’ll be evolving on to create a heavy layer of curation more than other storefronts… but it still is an open platform. You get the best of both worlds

You guys need to drop the 99$ fee to test the designed programs on the device. I worked with the beta and noticed my computer did run the emulation much faster than the vita was capable, presenting a problem of not knowing if a complicated game is capable of running on the vita properly.

Hey guys, it’s getting late here in California. Sarah and i need to get out of the office and get some rest. Thanks for the passion for PlayStation and the interest in PlayStation Mobile. We look forward to all of the great things you’ll be creating and adding to the PlayStation family!

So far I’ve really enjoyed some of the PS Mobile offerings, like Super Crate Box, Rebel, Aqua Kitty, Rock Boshers DX, Hungry Giraffe and Alien Breed. I obviously steer more towards the retro shooter game style, but I’d love to see more indie games and iOS games come over to the platform, as well as some of the better PS Minis like Velocity and Wizorb.

I hope to see more advertising and coverage of PS Mobile. Even big game sites like IGN don’t cover them or do reviews. They’re largely overlooked by the press and marketing, which is a shame.

My team was assessing your SDK during the Beta (we’re super excited over this btw) we were happy to C# was chosen since our current game we are working on (and is currently on hold while I’m working at EA) is written in C# and using XNA. Some rough edges here and there ot be expected. However we were wondering about Trophies and Networking capabilities for PS Mobile developers, has any of this been elaborated on? What about Visual Studio Support?

Again, my team and I really excited about this and we can’t wait to get this out there and on PSV and other PS Mobile certified devices. This is a good pushing off point for hobbiests too I think and could be a good start to a PlayStation Indie initiative that I think should be expanded to the PS3.

Over all this has seemed very promising, especially if your household consoles eventually support PS mobile. However, it seems that you guys are shunning out the massive field and potential of the ios developers, as you offer no Mac support. Is this still coming or are we out of the loop or forced into bootcamp if we wish to give this a try?

More important than trophies is having cloud storage for saves. Like how Ragnarok Odyssey has it. It would make a lot of sense to be able to carry over your save file from Vita, to your phone, then to your tablet and back to Vita without needing to have three separate save files.

-I’m able to download the SDK for free without registration.
-I’m allowed to create, test and share without a fee or any monetizing in mind. (like f2p with transactions for items)
-This sdk covers both PS branded mobile phones and PSVita. (I assume the games we develop would be minis)
-When it comes to publishing, I can have as many apps or games ready but can’t publish them in your store before I have made the one year payment.
-Does the one year publishing rights start when I pay for it. Or does it start in Jan and end in Dec?

I don’t like the idea of 99$ a year because its the same MS does with Windows Phones.
I would prefer it to be 25$ a life time like Android and you get your cut from the sales.

Also, can we do modification for the code and functions that come with SDK or is it prohibited?

Please add more countries to PS Mobile. I’m not very good at programming but I want to at least try it and play some games from Mobile. Don’t understand why it takes so long to make it available in more countries?

Why Brazil is not included in the list ? even to buy the games!?
We have a Playstation Store Brazil…
I Can BUY a PS3 a PSVITA and PSN GAMES offiacilly released here at a very high price, like US$ 750 for a ps3 or VIta ( price is most the same for both)
but I can´t develope for it?! Come on Sony Guys!! open this door and let us flood the ps brand with our creativity
I just tired to use a american representation to develope for some devices!!!
Time to change and be a true visionary! not a blind one!

Most of what you need to get started is in the dev kit. How to setup the game loop etc. If I remember correctly there are examples. You will need to learn C# as last I checked it is the only language the kit supports at present. Sony was also looking at adding a simple engine to help new comers get their legs in game programming.

Also, I have an idea for a simple non game app that would be really cool on vita, I have a C# guy that’s on board to help me, but we don’t wanna charge anything for it and want it to be ad based, based on the wording in the FAQs that is not possible:

“Can I develop free games and applications?
Published 08/08/2012 10:53 PM | Updated 11/19/2012 05:56 AM
Games and applications distributed through the PlayStation®Store will be limited to paid (including freemium) content for the moment.”

If that’s the case, please let me know, I’m not interested in charging for my app and would rather it be free and get the money from ads.

Hiya Manetheren17, We’re always considering new ideas and features… we love hearing from our community about what they’d like to see the most. While we may not implement every idea, our gamers do indeed influence our path significantly.

Looks like the comment i posted up yesterday didn’t appear… :( it says Your comment is awaiting moderation.

anyways here’s my comment

oh thank goodness :) but one thing buy any chance can you guys provide softwares to produce games?(MAC support too) please! i dream of creating games. i’m in college but man i want to start learning already :(

also i tried other softwares but there mostly for windows… looks like i need to use bootcamp/ parallel…$$$$

also i copied and paste a link to my share list one of them is about PS.Mobile can you guys please take a look :)

If I set the wholesale price of my product to $0.00 and add some ads there, will that be allowed? I don’t mind revenue sharing the ads, but I want to at least have the product be free, at least initially.

Hi ThreeLeggedFreak, no, currently we do not allow free games with ads or strictly free games. Free to play is welcomed however. We’ll take a look at this down the road and see where we head with ad-support games.